Various sides, Mr. Chair, will perhaps be able to put pen to paper to identify a potential compromise here, an amendment. You can even call it a friendly amendment if you want, because the substance of the motion, I hope, remains intact.
Let me make it clear that I think this motion is not in line with what this committee should be looking at or the mandate, but if this is the direction we're going to go.... Again, it's a minority Parliament and opposition members will try to take the steering wheel. I think it's incumbent upon us to restore a sense of responsibility in terms of what the committee should be looking at.
I'll leave it at that for my comments on the committee's direction.
As I speak, I think perhaps members could be, again, taking pen to paper and putting something together that could work as far as a compromise is concerned.
In the meantime, let me return to some of the points I had put on the table but didn't finish. First of all, there is the point of the summons, not only in terms of its place in this particular debate but also in terms of its place within the wider Westminster parliamentary tradition. Mr. Chair, you're a student of history, and I know you're interested very much in history because we have worked on committees before. You will know that the move towards issuing a summons within the Westminster tradition is itself extraordinary.
When members on this side communicate a strong concern, to put it mildly, about the possibility of a summons being issued towards witnesses, this is not something that's unique to this particular question, and it's not something that's unique to Canadian democracy at the federal level in the moment we find ourselves. This is something within the broader tradition of Westminster we borrow from that is considered problematic from start to finish. I think that is something we have to pay attention to. We can't ignore that and, for that reason as well, it is extremely important that we live up to our responsibilities as parliamentarians in this regard.
I wonder what the aim is in terms of the summons that can't be achieved by reissuing a letter and communicating a firmness in tone. Perhaps, Mr. Chair, you can be more firm in your letter. You're a polite man. You're a good guy, I think, and—